Library
The words, used the way the product uses them.
Every term here is one you’ll meet inside a Zoe diagnostic. Where a term belongs to the industry rather than to us, it has a page of its own and its row here points to it.
- Ask Zoeproprietary
- Report-linked questions and answers after the readout. Ask about any finding, score, or claim in the case and the answer points back to the evidence behind it. Available in every package.
- Behavioral Metadataproprietary
- Data about how work happens, not what the work is. Metadata is who communicates with whom, how fast, across which channels, at what cadence. From the connected systems Zoe reads patterns, not paragraphs: connections are read-only and scoped, what is extracted is discarded by default, and when the case is sealed the workspace is destroyed at 30 days with a certificate. (The deck, data-room files and the Founder Call transcript are stored for the case; the connected systems are not.) The patterns turn out to be more predictive than the content, which is why the method survives the privacy conversation instead of losing it.
- C-Suite Healthproprietary
- A Zoe health dimension that measures leadership effectiveness from behavioral data: decision latency, communication reach, communication concentration, and follow-through rate. C-Suite burnout is the single biggest leading indicator of underperformance, yet no traditional DD process measures it.
- Claim Ledgerproprietary
- The pitch deck, one row per claim. Each row is checked against the connected systems and the data-room evidence once they arrive, and each row ends up confirmed, contradicted, or open. Open rows become the questions for the Founder Call.
- Communication Pulseproprietary
- A Zoe metric for the rhythm and health of information flow across an organization: message cadence, response latency, how evenly communication is distributed, and how concentrated it is around a few individuals. It is read from metadata: timing and routing, never message content. A steady, well-distributed pulse signals healthy collaboration; a slowing or over-concentrated pulse flags bottlenecks and silo risk.
- Confidence and Coverage Tierproprietary
- What travels with every Zoe Score. Confidence is a percentage: how sure Zoe is of the number given the data behind it. The coverage tier says how much of the nine dimensions the connected sources and evidence actually reach. Thin data lowers both rather than being guessed at, and the Signed Opinion issues only when confidence clears the bar.
- Culture & Peopleproprietary
- A Zoe health dimension that measures the health of the human system from behavior: cross-team channel edges, response latency, meeting load, and change points, read from Slack. Culture problems are leading indicators of execution problems. A declining Culture & People score often precedes drops in Delivery & Execution.
- Decision Heart Rateproprietary
- A Zoe metric for the cadence at which an organization makes and resolves decisions: how often decisions are initiated, how long they take to close, and how many approval hops they pass through. It is inferred from communication metadata. A strong, regular decision heart rate signals operational vitality; a slow or erratic one predicts execution drag after close. Closely related to Decision Velocity.
- Decision Velocityproprietary
- The average time from when a decision is needed to when it is made and communicated. Measured from meeting patterns, approval chains, and Slack-to-action latency. Slow decision velocity is the silent killer of post-acquisition value, and it is invisible at close, when financial performance can look identical.
- Deck Dropproprietary
- The first thing that goes into a case’s data room: the target’s pitch deck. Zoe reads it and turns every claim in it into a row of the Claim Ledger. Other data-room PDFs and CSVs can follow as evidence, but the deck comes first.
- Delivery & Executionproprietary
- A Zoe health dimension measuring whether the company actually ships. Tracks deploy frequency, on-time delivery rate, sprint completion, lead time, and unplanned firefighting ratio. Most board decks show vanity velocity charts; real execution health lives in the operational data.
- Evidence Appendixproprietary
- The back of the Readout Package: every finding traced to the metric, the dated pull, the Claim Ledger row, or the Founder Call answer that supports it. It is why a Zoe finding can be checked rather than believed.
- Financial Vitalityproprietary
- The Zoe health dimension that carries the most weight at most stages. Measures the financial foundation of the business through six metrics: Cash Runway, Burn Multiple, Net Revenue Retention, Gross Margin, Revenue Growth Rate, and Capital Efficiency Ratio. Sourced from the accounting and CRM systems the target connects read-only, and checked against what the deck claimed (Said vs True).
- Founder Callproprietary
- One call with the target’s founder or CEO. The questions are generated from the gaps the Claim Ledger leaves open. The transcript is ingested and each answer is scored answered, dodged, or contradicted. No surveys, no forty interviews: one call, scored.
- Health Dimensionproprietary
- One of the nine operational categories that make up a Zoe diagnostic: Financial Vitality, Delivery & Execution, Culture & People, C-Suite, Market & Competition, Go-to-Market, Vision & Strategy, Product & Customer, and Risk. Each dimension has its own sub-metrics and data sources, and the score they roll up to carries a confidence percentage and a coverage tier.
- IC Memoproprietary
- The investment-committee memo inside the Readout Package: the findings, the score, and what they mean for the deal, written so it can go into the IC pack as it stands. It states what Zoe read and what it did not; the decision stays the buyer’s.
- Readout Packageproprietary
- What a case delivers, inside 24 hours of the run: the Zoe Score across nine dimensions with findings and how to read them, the IC Memo, the Signed Opinion when confidence clears the bar, and the Evidence Appendix. Ask Zoe sits alongside it for questions, and the export suite carries it into your own IC pack.
- Said vs Trueproprietary
- The automatic cross-check that fires once the target’s books connect: what the deck said against what the systems record. It runs without anyone asking, and its results feed the Claim Ledger, the Founder Call questions, and the findings in the Readout Package.
- Seal the Caseproprietary
- How a case closes. When you seal it, the normalized metrics and case data are destroyed at 30 days and a destruction certificate issues. On the Portfolio package you can keep the case open instead and monitor the company after close.
- Signed Opinionproprietary
- Zoe’s signed view of the operational picture, issued when confidence clears the bar. It is not a quality-of-earnings, legal, or market opinion, and it does not make the buy decision. When confidence is below the bar the package says so and ships without it.
- Stage Weightingproprietary
- Zoe’s approach to scoring companies at different maturity stages. A pre-seed company is judged differently than a PE portfolio company. At pre-seed, C-Suite Health and Vision & Strategy dominate; at growth stage, Financial Vitality and Delivery & Execution carry more weight. Stage-weighted scoring prevents apples-to-oranges comparison across a mixed portfolio.
- Target Inviteproprietary
- How a target company grants access. The investor sends the target a signed link; whoever holds the keys there (often the CEO, CFO or an admin) opens it. The link presents the Data Processing Agreement; accepting it is logged as a consent event. The target then connects QuickBooks, one CRM (HubSpot or Salesforce), GitHub, Jira and Slack read-only, in their own session. The investor never sees a credential.
- Zoe Scoreproprietary
- A composite score (0 to 100) across nine dimensions: Financial Vitality, Delivery & Execution, Culture & People, C-Suite, Market & Competition, Go-to-Market, Vision & Strategy, Product & Customer, and Risk, weighted for the company’s stage. Computed when you run the Zoe Diagnostic; it ships with a confidence percentage and a coverage tier. Every point decomposes to the metrics and the dated pulls behind it. 70 and above reads Healthy, 50 to 69 Attention, below 50 Critical. The band is always named in words next to the number, never carried by color alone.
- Burn Multiplepromoted
- Net burn divided by net new ARR over a period. A burn multiple below 1.0 is excellent; 1.0–2.0 is good; above 3.0 signals capital inefficiency. Zoe checks burn multiple against what the deck claimed, and keeps tracking it if the case stays open under Portfolio monitoring.
- Net Revenue Retention (NRR)promoted
- The percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers over a period, including expansion and churn. NRR above 110% indicates strong product-market fit; below 90% signals structural churn. A Zoe sub-metric under Financial Vitality.
- Quality of Earnings (QofE)promoted
- A financial diligence deliverable that normalizes reported EBITDA by adjusting for one-time items, accounting irregularities, and revenue recognition issues. QofE reports are the standard for financial DD but say nothing about whether the company can execute its plan post-close.